A Family by Any Other Name

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and JOY in each other’s lives. - Richard Bach

The struggle is real. It’s time to truly address a toxic life and find reason in what seems most to be unreasonable.

I am not sure of the timing but reality tells me to start the journey so what’s left behind is the words in my point of view so others who follow can choose to criticize, make light of, or find reason. It is because  being able to explain myself has been taken away.

Just before the pandemic of 2020 I found myself in need of therapy. I was offered “Trauma Therapy” as I had been down this path before and the Doctor felt an intensive look at my life was warranted to maybe bring some enlightenment to help me become a better version of myself.

For just over 6 months I spent time weekly going over almost 60 years of my life to try and understand why I was the way I was. You see, for me, everyone seems to have had an opinion of my toxicity and as hard as I had tried to find the ways to fit into my family it seemed every effort I made was wrong. I knew if I could just find peace, maybe then it would work.

We started. With my early years and the pecking order of the Lloyd family. I came out on the losing end of that battle. Being the youngest girl meant I spent most of my childhood being called names and being incredibly bullied. It radiated to all aspects of my life throughout those years and with added circumstances i exited those years with serious OCD.

I learned that most of what I saw in myself was from those experiences and that unlearning them would be the only way I could overcome my incessant need to apologize for everything. Here is where, because of those issues I became an easy target to anyone in need of controlling a broken soul. 

Twenty Three years later I choose to live and find purpose. It was, to that moment the bravest thing I had ever done. I found myself full throttle to serving a divorce and in the best of heart protecting my children and myself from any further harm.

In the end of the therapy I learned about toxic relationships and changing them. About boundaries that self protect and those who find it hard to see you any differently and those who will refuse to see you or even accept change and then those who will refuse to forgive.

After the end of my sessions I found courage where I thought none existed and peace, real soul satisfying peace and yet at times, I found it hard when others demanded the old me. It’s here when I distanced myself. Others have called it shutting out but for me. I had to salvage what’s left of my life to only demand peace. It has been so hard, continues to be hard but I know at some point, maybe years from now, those people will understand.

It was the summer of 2023 when the doctors finally found reason for my health problems. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office and his desk covered in books and images. I had a procedure that looked at my stomach and they found that it was damaged in a way that diagnosed Gastric Paresis. He continued that due to other known ailments such as brain lesions, heart problems and neuropathy of my feet and hands that I was close to an Autonomic Neuropathy diagnosis which would then give me a time line.

Six months later I got Covid and that changed everything. In just over six months my stomach paralysis went from 21% to 81% and I entered the final stage. 

This is where I am now.  Pain is my nemesis. I suffer every time I eat, if I can eat, and in any movements of my bowels or colon it brings agony. The kicker of this condition is pain meds only make it worse. This is the reality of my day to day now. I am slowly losing and gaining weight until there won’t be any more weight to loss (they tell me it was good to be obese to start, it gives me more time) and my mental health is taking a toll as I navigate the daily pain I face.

It’s for this reason I need to start writing again. I need to have a voice in who I am/was and why I do the things I do and most importantly FEEL.

Hopefully it will help explain and maybe offer me hope at forgiveness and understanding and that those that can find reason will not suffer as deeply as I have had to.

Sandi

It’s Complicated

Sometimes the most complicated times of ours lives are fueled by those decisions we make in just a moment of thought.

I write every Christmas Eve on whatever blog I choose to go to but I think for now, this recovery journey I yet again entail myself into will be exposed here. No more sugar coated goodness. Just the reality of a broke soul trying to find a way to exist in a world that labels you toxic. So, here we go.

I learned a word in the last month. Actually, two. Reactive abuse. “Reactive abuse” is when a perpetrator of abuse deliberately triggers their partner into reacting to their abusive behavior aggressively. Abusive partners may use this manipulative tactic to shift blame away from themselves by claiming that the abuse is two-sided.

I think the other word would be bullying. It’s a condition I know all too well. 

I stopped writing because I was told too. I share to freely, I am too open, I paint a negative picture, I am just self-egrandizing. My goodness i have heard just about everything that can be said that comes down to one word “shut-up”.

So I did. I stopped it all and then fell apart. Writing is a therapy for me, a way to go through what has happened and fin a meaning or purpose. Purging the words from my soul is healing, for me, and because it has made others uncomfortable, as always, I put them first.

At 62, i should be able to be free enough to speak my peace.

So here is goes.

Here we are at yet another CHristmas where fighting and dismay rule the environment. I have spent many an hour in therapy being taught proper boundaries and even more appropriate  behavior. In each attempt to set those boundaries and behaviors up I am met with a wall of aggression and demands. Over and over again I am told if they can’t respect them move on and yet I am heartbroken, deeply, deeply, heartbroken and finding myself isolated more and more.

So what do you do?

Pain is a very real thing, it is, literally, eating me up. Dr’s say I HAVE to remove myself from stress. OK, so how? What if your very presence causes stress. Yes, I get it.

Do I leave, do I walk away from the people I love the most in the world. Is it or has it been too much to ask for respect. For just a minion of honour for the effort? Apparently it is.

So now, I listen.

I hear you.

You say I ghost people and yet, over and over you have asked me to accept a level of disrespect unattainable in anyone’s life.

No disrespect but it is a two way street and I am tired of being forced to accept your demands and receive little or nothing in return.

The real and only way to remove yourself from reactive abuse to remove yourself entirely from the ability for it to happen.

Enough is enough. 

 

TIME -

I’m writing again. I have to. I’m tired of being silent.

In my Heart Only

So, Ive been through something that was pretty hard. Unfortunately everyone around me is so tired or jeez, I don't know, disinterested in it that I crashed and burned all in my lonesome and I think I had a huge AHA moment.

I have always gauge my life and those in by the interaction I had with my mother. That being said, "do my kids treat me the way I treated my mother?" and what can  do to have value in their lives.

I learned yesterday that the answer is nothing. For so many years I have fought to prove my value and yesterday I realized I should never have to do that. If they couldn't take the time to care over this then there's not much else to say.

Stpping away now.

STRONG

You never know how strong you are 

until being strong 

is the only choice you have.

Somedays and in some ways life has a way bringing perspective to the forefront. I am in that place. Tomorrow I have surgery, a surgery I never expected but all the same, one that can make life come into balance. 

To the balancing of life!

To the Morning

"Why do birds sing in the morning? It's the triumphant shout: 

'We got through another night!'"

 - Enid Bagnold

Every morning and every night this beautiful prairie meadowlark gladly proclaims his song on the evergreen outside my window. He begins around 4:30am and returns at around 10pm. It's a beautiful melody and to tell you the truth it is very appealing. I count on the lyrical serenade as for some very deep and profound reason it brings me solace.

This week has been a rough one for many in and out of the church. A good Internet friend, one to whom I have watched transition from a soft spoken, intelligent leader to a women with a cause was excommunicated. Once again, the story was picked up by the NY Times and then the world press. My friend John Dehlin has been served notice as well.

And so it goes again. I have seen this scenario played out a few times in the church in my years on the spinning globe. My fear that Kate has been sacrificially slaughtered as a warning to all other deep thinking progress Mormon feminists is not unfounded. She stepped out of place, she's been owned as they say.

The sad result however is the attacks of so many on KATE KELLY by those ever so lovely Mormons with such grand intentions of proclaiming the truth; being ever so Christ-like in their words. I am so tired of what some call "righteous indignation". I call Bullshit. It's just bullying, pure and simple. 

"Get back in line or we will make you get back in line or get out of our church all together". 

Rule 1 in criticism of the church. Be prepared. Especially if you are a Mormon.

I resigned my membership just over 6 months ago. Best decision I have ever made in my life. I don't miss the religion of Mormonism. The cruel harsh reality of a persecution complex on crack demanding faith as your forefathers lost their lives for it. If only members would take a realistic look at their history and see the only true persecution came from within their very own actions.

My whole life I was taught freedom could only be had within the faith. Wow, I have NEVER BEEN MORE FREE than these last 6 months. Free to think, free to act, free to decide and to actually own my decisions and defend them to myself and no one else. That is freedom, true freedom.

I want these words down for posterity. The sad reality is my Mormon relatives will always see me as a heretic; a broken, crippled woman who has lost her way. The truth is that I have never been so found in my entire life.

I never used to pay much attention to the meadowlark outside my window before, I am sure he has always been there. He sits on the top of the tallest pine tree and sings for hours, his song so soothing to my soul. I worry less, I feel more, I love more deeply and I hardly ever judge, excepting those Mormons that constantly call me to repentance; those I judge.

This world, Our God, would never count on such a small amount of "holier than thou" religious zealots to save all of humanity, he just wouldn't. It just doesn't make sense. God is just not that cruel.

On Being Alone

So, why start writing again? I am sure that's a question that will be asked when you realize I have taken to words again.

Well.

I have been under the weather lately. My mind tends to wander when that happens and since I struggle on a daily basis with what some would call depression and I say the blues as I have been told by the Dr's I don't qualify to the label of depression this then results in a wandering mind.

On Thursday a friend who removed me from contact over 3 years ago left a note in my mailbox. Wayne brought it to me and as I read it it brought back so many fond memories of a very long shared friendship. I miss her, and I don't miss that many of my old acquaintances.

I held the note for a short while. You see, when I let that old social network in inevitably they cause harm so I am quite leery. What to do? I decided that since I have been so alone for so long I would reach out and see what it is she wanted.

BIG MISTAKE!

The conversation begins as all Mormon conversations do; speaking about the accomplishments of your children and to clarify it isn't anything other than the amount of grandchildren, their marriage status and their children. They don't care about careers, about life skills; it's all about "are they active, are they happy in the gospel because to Mormons there is no happiness anywhere else. Two minutes in I realized that it was not going to be any different.

Man I don't miss this.

Within a few short minutes and out of nowhere my friend began a narrative about another good friend's son and his indiscretions. She was specific and heartless. This good friend whose son she was speaking about is someone I don't know well but I am close to S the mother and hearing this was repulsive to me. S and I speak often and if this was something she wanted me to know she would have told me. I knew then the conversation was over, done.

More importantly I came to know for sure just how grateful I am for being out of the church as conversations, intimate, detailed conversations of gossip are something I am very rarely involved with.

I know I would rather have 2 close friends then a ward of friends whose whole being is evolving around the perfectness of lives. Do Mormons even know just how cruel they are to each other? I live in such a different world and every once in a while those awful character traits come out in me. I catch myself now and change the direction and even though I live a very lonely life it is still one I would rather have then go backwards to the kind of cruelty I witnessed this week.

Unfortunately I confided in her about a situation I am dealing with and one I have hoped she would keep to herself. I know I placed my trust in the wrong place and I know there will be a price to pay for it.

Still learning life lessons and failing.

Oh well.

Time Passing

“You'll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. 

Be bold enough to live life on your terms,
and never, ever apologize for it. 

Go against the grain,
refuse to conform,
take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path.
Laugh in the face of adversity,
and leap before you look. 

Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. 

March to the beat of your own drummer. 

And stubbornly refuse to fit in.”  

~Mandy Hale

So for over the last year I have fought an internal battle of my soul. It seemed that my words were making some people uncomfortable. I received a phone call stating so and true to the weakness of my being I crumbled and put down my pen.

I'm not sure why, maybe I needed to think through life rather than write through it but whatever may be in changed me.

In December of 2013 I had had enough. I was tired of being told who and what I was supposed to be. Tired of being forced to live between the lines defined by religious zealots who felt they controlled my destiny. Tired of it all.

I wrote a simple letter, a simple paragraph that had I known the freedom of spirit it would grant to me I would have done it so much sooner.

This last 6 months have been so liberating as I have allowed myself to absorb a truth that living defined not man. This path has never been easy but so well worth it.

So why pick up the pen now?

Curve balls.

I have always feared the journey I am about to embark on. It seems to be the path of many of the women of my family before me. I have no fear now as the reality has hit.

It's funny how you can lose a religion that so defined you and find so much of yourself once you do.

I will continue to chronicle this new journey and do so knowing everything will be OK.

  

The Private Me - slumber is over

It's been over 6 months, for all that time I have ached inside to write; to let through my words the cause of healing happen. To bleed the pain away and to heal.

I stopped writing for 2 reasons, one, as a request and two, to rethink where I was going. In the 6 months away I have looked very deeply into my soul. I have learned the truths about myself that speak to where I have been and to where I am going.

So here is what I have to say.

If you were a friend of mine when I was active in the church and if in reading this you are offended.... tough shit. Don't read it. I haven't heard hide nor hair of any of you in over three years and quite frankly, I don't care. I am not writing this to win your friendship back, seriously, I should thank you for teaching me about the true meaning of friendship. So let me take this opportunity to tell you that I will resume writing and if your curiosity brings you back here it is you exercising your agency to do so, you don't have to read it, you don't have to be involved and if my words bother you, pick up a phone and call me; don't run to the Bishop and complain. He's not my Bishop anymore.

The above photo was taken 4 days before the worst floods hit the land of my song. This very spot doesn't even exist anymore. In its place are new creeks and valleys carved from the chaos of what is being called a "once in a century" flood. It is just as beautiful there now, maybe even more so, and in time it will bring many to it's banks to feel the peace that comes only in a place like this, transformed and all.

I may not be the same person I was 10 years ago but what I have become is so much more than I ever would have become being chained the way I was.

I am writing again, I need to, it completes me.

If this bothers you, move on.

Here's to getting back to the completeness that comes from the song that comes through the soul's word's.

The Closing Chapter

Never in my life did I think I would end up in such a beautiful place ...doing so many incredible things. So, I'm sorry if I was a little too honest with you. But I wasted too much of my life being quiet. I was afraid, I guess. You know how it is. You keep your head down and you hustle and hustle. Then you look up one day and wonder, “How did I even get here?”  ~ Last Holiday

I just spent 10 days by myself on Vancouver Island. Winter is brutal on me and this one was no exception. With W's limited vacation time and my extra from working overtime it just seemed right to get out and explore. My sister gave me the OK to stay in her beautiful home on the ocean so there I was, waking to sleeping hours hearing the waves crash, watching the sun rise and fall and hearing the migrating sea lions on the log boom just a short distance away. 

When I started this blog I had just read the book by Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now" and had come to realize that this moment, the exact Now of our lives was the healing zone. I can't think of a better way to find Now and reside there for a moment than to take time away by oneself and just be.

It's time to close it (the blog); respectively and with purpose. It was never so apparent than when I heard from my middle BBG while away and she was hurt and needed it done. I had already moved on from here but hadn't left this place with an official closure and message. 

Well, here it is.

The only intent of this blog was to heal. To document a journey and to give purpose to the actions some have most understood. You see, I come from a strong heritage of writers of journals. Even while I was away these last few weeks, my cousin shared with me a photocopy of the journal of my great grandfather as he migrated (adventure was his original purpose) from England to the Gold Rush in the Klondike to Vancouver where he met and fell in love with my namesake. His great aunt's journal that documents her travels from England to Turkey in search of healing at the Turkish Baths in the 1800's is also a part of my library. These are just a few of the words left to show how we, as a family, move through our lives.

I sometimes read back on this blog and see and feel those moments that made me heartsick, heartbroken, joyful and even elated. I have removed some posts because their point of reference was filled with too much anger. Yes, I did edit contra to some opinions. I have relished those where an AHA moment changed my life. Mostly though, I have evolved from all the pain and this blog has documented it. I made it through and I made it through whole, happy and with my children still with me. That would not have happened if I hadn't have taken a hard look at myself and asked the question, "what could I have done differently?" The answers were all there, in the words and because they're journal they will be a learning for generations to come, both the hard lessons and those that just made me who I am today.

Each child has a paradym of the past, much like I do, even M. The most important thing is to validate those paradigms and apologize where your behavior hurt people. That is the most essential part of these past 6 years. Saying sorry has been the most liberating evolution for me. Just this last week, BBG #1 asked me to stop apologizing. All I could say was I can't. I choose M, I chose that life, they were born into it. NO CHOICE there, and because they had no choice they suffered at the hands of my choice and for that, the apology will never ever end; ever.

Here is what I am on about.

Closing the chapter.

This week, these words, this blog was attacked again. It's funny how those who really know this journey, know my heart, see these words as inspiring, moving, quite gentle compared to what could be said and yet those, driven my a religious fear see them as an assault and mean spirited. "You can't please them all" as granny used to say and as I reflect I stand behind all that has been written. I do this because right from the start, the very first post, I left a disclaimer that said, this is MY JOURNEY. If you don't like it, no worries because I didn't write the words to please you or any other person. They were written as a journalistic journey of recovery from ABUSE. They were written for me, for my children. PERIOD.

Now to M, yes you, MARK.

For so long I have strived for indifference when it came to you. I was told that it was the opposite of love and I was willing to do whatever I could to not be in love with you.

I would argue now that isn't my goal anymore. You so rarely come up in conversation and when you do, it is mostly not a great conversation. Your actions over these last 8 years have proven over and over again that the decision to walk away was the right one. You continue to hurt the children and yet you continue to prove you haven't the social awareness to understand why. I thought you insensitivity and heartlessness was just a result of a cruel, religiously zealous attitude and yet now, I see you as broken, like the rest of us, just broken.

Your kids will always love you. That is ingrained into them, it's human nature. Respect on the other hand is earned and can easily be lost.

You think I have left the church to keep the kids happy and that I am less a parent for doing so and yet, if you have read this blog as you claim then the only way you could have ever come up with that is that you haven't comprehended a single word that has been written. My leaving the church, if blame can be laid at any one's feet would lay squarely on yours. Summed up: Spiritual Abuse.

Notice I used the word IF. I don't blame my departure on anyone. It is a CHOICE. One, by the way, I am very comfortable with. Having any kind of conversation with you on the fact is pointless because you judge too harshly and far too quickly to have any kind of rational conversation about it. You live your faith in absolutes and claim a Christ like existence so far from who the Savior was/is that I have no hope to ever have you try and understand my point of view. It would be pointless.

That was the major fault of our marriage, I spent 25 years hoping you would learn to hear and understand and now I realize that you are incapable of it. Understanding that helps me to know that ending the marriage was the right thing to do. Some people are never meant to be married. We are a perfect example of that.You see, marriage isn't about control, its about love. You truly believed that by controlling me, controlling your children you were in fact loving us and yet, we see it very differently.

I have NO regrets over these past few years. I wish I could have some do overs but human nature is to fail sometimes. When we do, and if we pick ourselves up we are living .That is what this blog was about. Living and what to do to pick yourself up.

In the space of just a few weeks these words were used against me more than once. The irony is that in all the cases it was members of the church that used them. As I listened to conference this past weekend (I still do that) I heard over and over again the admonition to be nice, kind, tolerant. To reach out without judgement and to be like the Savior and found the irony of those words as I reflected on my past few years and the interactions I have had with the very members of the church those words were for.

I have moved on from here. I still write to my hearts content and release the words meant o be written if not for others at least for me, for my own solace. This blog is closing, this is the final post. My children have asked that I not shared openly their lives with their father who is reading this. At least not until he can understand what it is he did that caused such pain.

I guess my only admonition would be; when we understand what it is we are doing that causes the hurt, as much as it hurts to admit it, saying sorry and actually meaning it without excusing it through religion or whatever vehicle we chose, we can heal, we can grow and we can then earn back the respect we lost when we forgot to parent our children instead of being so angry at each other.

Forgive me for all the wrong I caused you and yes, as passively aggressive as this may sound, I forgive you.

God bless you M on your fight with your health. I hope only the best for you.

“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

For me, I have changed for the better. I would go through it all again, these past 6 years, if it meant the learning would be the same. Sometimes, we go through the gauntlet to become strong. I am stronger.

Goodbye all.